


i regret (to inform you)

by toli-a (togina)



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Grief/Mourning, Multi, WWII
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-03
Updated: 2016-03-03
Packaged: 2018-05-26 19:29:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 584
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6252556
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/togina/pseuds/toli-a
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's a quiet ride home to London, Zola in their grasp and everything else out of control, impossible to pin down. Impossible to hold Steve together, after the fall.</p>
            </blockquote>





	i regret (to inform you)

They bring Zola back to London - and the only sound is the roar of the engines. The Commandos have never been silent, before, but their captain has a blank, stilted look on his face, as though he was a wind-up toy with a broken key.

And they try to help, because moving is the best way to distract themselves from their missing sergeant. Dugan takes the weapons down to Stark for repair, and Morita says he and Monty will escort Zola to the Colonel. Dernier and Jones freeze, because  _ Sarge  _ was the one in charge of rations and laundry and weapon replacement, all the details no one else ever bothered to learn. Sarge was in charge of Steve, who’s still crouched on the floor of the plane, staring blankly through his clasped hands.

“Are you planning to report?” Carter asks them, breezing up in a dress uniform and the confidence that could slay a man. Smirking, because none of them had managed to radio anything to base but their coordinates.

Because no one wanted to be the first to say that Barnes was dead.

“Uh, I - I’ll do it,” Gabe stutters, and Peggy is as smart as any of them, her eyes wide as she realizes Rogers is still in the plane. She nods at him, readying herself to climb up into the cargo bay, but Steve crawls out before she can. He moves like an old man, like every bone and muscle aches with the youthful vitality it’s lost.

“No.” He doesn’t meet any of their eyes, gazes past them to the corrugated steel of the hangar, through that to a loss only Gabe had seen. His voice is faint, as though he had screamed the whole flight home. As though the tears had lodged in his throat, lancing the soft tissue like shards of glass. “I’ll write it. It’s what I signed up for.”

And he doesn’t say it, doesn’t look at them as he strides off towards the barracks and the room he shared with Sgt. Barnes. He doesn’t say it, but Jacques, Gabe and Peggy all know that Barnes never signed up for the war. And none of them are brave enough, yet - none of them have had a chance to grieve Sarge on their own terms - to follow Captain America like Barnes would have done without a thought, demanding that the man acknowledge what Bucky  _ had  _ signed up for.

(“What will you do, after the war?” Gabe had asked Sarge once, standing watch in the middle of Poland just before dawn, brewing something that passed for coffee while Barnes stood at attention. He glanced down at Jones, gave him a quick smile, a flash of teeth and pale eyes under his cap. “There’s a war on?” he replied, light and easy, cigarette hanging off his lip. “Who could tell? I’m just doing what I’ve done for twenty years, now.” He paused to take a long drag off the smoke he’d pilfered from Steve’s untouched ration, glanced over at Cap’s bed roll and offered a quieter smile into the first coral arch of the dawn. Looked back at Gabe, raised his eyebrows and tilted his head at the snoring super-soldier a few feet away. Jones nodded, and never asked again.)

It’s no surprise, that Carter is the first one strong enough to try. It’s no surprise that Steve loves her, for striding in and rattling her sword, tilting her chin up and stamping through the echoing caverns Bucky left behind.


End file.
